Working at the mortuary is one of the jobs most people shun so much that they don’t even want to associate themselves with mortuary-men, let alone shake their hands or eat with them.Â
However, just as bankers, journalists, and other professionals love their jobs and do them wholeheartedly, mortuary men also love dealing with dead bodies.
A 57-year-old Ugandan man, Basil Enatu who has worked on dead bodies as a mortuary-man for the past 32 years is one of those few men who don’t see anything wrong with working at the mortuary and would choose it over any other job.
The father of 10 boys and two girls has been reportedly working at the Soroti Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda for not less than 32 years, and has narrated the challenges of his work and his motivation for doing it for over three decades.
He told Uganda's Daily Monitor: “At the time when I used to drink a local brew, people would not want to share a drinking straw or calabash with me. I also noticed a scenario where a vendor had to wash the tube I used for taking the brew using hot water. People do not even want to share a pot or shake hands with me,†Enatu is quoted as saying.
Despite the challenges as he enumerated, he still loves being a mortuary attendant, for which reason he has done it for years without getting fed up. The harmlessness of dead bodies is what he loves so much, hence his unflinching love for his job.
“I love working on bodies because they do not complain, do not fight, are humble, and are not trouble causers.
“After all, rich or poor, all are buried the same way by being lowered into the grave..." he said.
Well, if everybody is shying away from working at the mortuary, then who will dress and keep corpses for families until they are ready to bury their deceased loved ones? Definitely, some people must sacrifice to do that, just as Basil Enatu and others, and they must be appreciated rather than ostracised.
Credit: Pulsegh
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